Reconnecting
by Sakrea
Summary: Considering his past, maybe it wasn't such a good idea for Wheeljack to try and rekindle his friendship with Ratchet. TFA verse, after season 3.


"Oh hey Ratchet! It's good to see you—"

**SLAM.**

"Okay. Ow."

"Get out of here you spawn of a glitch!" Ratchet snarled through the closed door.

Wheeljack gingerly rubbed the hand that the

medic bot had slammed into the door. "You really gonna treat your old friend like that?" he called back.

"HA! You're not a friend, you slagger!"

Wheeljack wiggled his dented fingers briefly, noting that the creaking-grinding sound coming from three of the joints was definitely not a good sign. "I said old!"

The door opened a fraction and one blue optic glared out. "Precisely, so leave." The door slammed shut again.

"I can't."

"Oh REALLY?" Ratchet spat from behind the door.

"Yeah." Wheeljack said, starting up a nervous chuckle. "You see…. Percy isn't so good with explosives…"

The door opened once more and this time the optic peered critically at him. "I noticed that when he blew Omega's foot off."

Wheeljack shook his head at the memory, smirking behind his mask. "That was one of the worse incidents."

"No kidding." Ratchet replied flatly before he started to close the door again.

Realizing what the medic was doing, Wheeljack jammed his foot in the door. "Uh, ow. Okay. Anyway, I'm actually here for a reason." He held up his hands when the optic glared. "There was an accident. Percy got me with his own explosion, but managed to dodge it himself."

The optic didn't stop glaring, but did drag itself across the engineer's body, searching for damage. "You aren't injured."

Wheeljack pointed one creaking finger over his shoulder. Judging by the pause, then the way the optic wavered, the medic noticed that he was missing a door wing. "I got some wires sparking uncomfortably back there... And you're the only medic on duty, so…."

There was a pause and the medic gave a heavy sigh. "Fine. I suppose it's my duty, even though SOME of us don't seem to understand what duty is." Ratchet said, flinging the door open.

"Actually I think the correct term would be morals. My duty was to build Omega Supreme, but I set aside morals and gave him a simple processor." Wheeljack corrected a bit too cheerfully. He immediately cursed his big mouth when the door slammed into his foot again.

"You want to be fixed or not?" Ratchet snarled, opening the door again.

Wheeljack let out a low string of curses and jerked his foot up, bouncing slightly on the other one. "Fine fine! Sorry! Ow!"

The medic turned and stalked back into his med bay, mumbling angrily to himself. When Wheeljack felt his foot stop throbbing, he set it back down and painfully limped after him.

"Sit down." Ratchet ordered, pointing sharply at an open medical berth. The medic had turned then and started to rifle through his tools, trying to find who knows what.

Wheeljack, sensing he'd already pushed his luck too far already, did as he was commanded and sat himself on the edge of the berth, his legs hanging over the edge.

After a few moments, the red and white mech returned, brandishing a handful of tools and a welder. As he walked around the berth, he shot a steady glare at the mech occupying it.

"…How did you manage to walk here?" Ratchet finally asked flatly from somewhere behind Wheeljack.

"…Perseverance?"

There was a heavy sigh and Ratchet rubbed a hand across his face. "I can see your spark chamber through the hole in your back."

"Oh good! So it just got the plating and wiring then?"

Wheeljack grunted when he felt a wrench connect solidly with the back of his helm. "I almost forgot about your love of wrenching people…" he chuckled, rubbing the injured area.

"And you're just as much of a medical freak as you were before." Ratchet grunted behind him, starting to poke and prod at the injured entirety of the engineer's back.

"I'll take that as a compliment." Wheeljack replied grinning under his mask.

The old medic just gave a grunt in response, seemingly doing his best to ignore the engineer while he fixed him. His patient seemed to understand that as well, choosing to remain silent for a time. So, for about a cycle, Ratchet's med bay was quiet. Other than the sound of tinkering, the only sound that broke the silence was Wheeljack's occasional pained yelping.

As many knew, the engineer was a rather social mech who enjoyed being around friends and most of all, he loved conversation. So, while Wheeljack had maintained the silence for the medic's sake, he was starting to feel antsy.

"Hey Ratch?" Wheeljack asked. The medic grunted, whether in acknowledgement or in annoyance at the friendly nickname, he couldn't have guessed. "What happened to us?"

The medic didn't pause in his work at the question. "You know perfectly well what happened to us."

The engineer fidgeted slightly at the response. "The whole thing with Omega?"

"What you did to Omega and what you didn't do for him."

Okay, so Wheeljack understood the first part. He didn't need to be told how much Ratchet hated him for giving Omega such a limited processor, but come on; he didn't have any choice either. Even if he'd wanted to give him full processing capabilities, he had orders. Not only that, but Perceptor had been all for it… The red scientist was a hard mech to go against.

"What didn't I do?"

"You abandoned him like a failed experiment." Ratchet snapped, tugging hard on a wire he had been trying to mend. "You didn't help him."

Wheeljack bit back a yelp and dug his fingers into his plating. Ow. Right. Never anger a medic when he had his hands in you. "I-I've actually been meaning to ask you how you got him back online." He replied, thinking better of dropping the subject.

"That's none of your concern." Ratchet grunted.

For only a brief moment, Wheeljack considered biting back his words for his own safety, but as always, he ignored his own advice. "It's very much my concern."

There was another yank on a wire and Wheeljack squeaked in an attempt to silence his cry of pain. "Okay, ow. Ow. That came out wrong." He said, shuddering. "I mean that I need to know." Once more, there was a tug of a wire. "Ow! Okay, I don't need to know, but I'm curious! I thought Omega was dead!"

Ratchet suddenly paused in his work. "He was in a modified stasis." He said slowly, almost suspiciously.

"Oh." Wheeljack said, surprised. "That's why his spark chamber was empty."

"And how would you know?" Ratchet asked.

"Oh. Uh… I wouldn't." The engineer replied lamely.

Ratchet pulled another wire, this one far more sensitive than the others, as it seemed to be a neural cable.

"OW! OW ow ow ow ow ow!"

"I know for a fact that no one inspected Omega Supreme's injuries after that battle." The medic growled. "Everyone had orders not to bother with repairs on the savior of the Autobots!"

Wheeljack squirmed in the medic's hold, several wires still being pulled tight in his grasp. "S-Sorry! I hacked the video feeds inside Omega!"

"Why?" Ratchet snapped, not loosening his grip on his internals.

"I wanted to see if he was still alive!"

"Why?" Ratchet repeated.

"I didn't want him to die!"

"Why?" Ratchet insisted once more. "So you could revive him and abuse his abilities again?"

Wheeljack squirmed and decided this wasn't working. He needed a new tactic here. "You remember the Jet Twins?" he asked desperately.

"How could I forget?" Ratchet huffed, loosening the wires just slightly. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"W-Well… Percy, Red Alert, and I are the ones who reformatted them." Wheeljack said. Ratchet made an angry sound, expressing his displeasure about that entire ordeal. "And well… I know I'm not one their original creators, but I kinda feel like I am. I mean, I love em like they were my own."

The wires loosened much more this time. "Touching. Why are you telling me this?"

"Omega is more like my own sparkling in technical terms." Wheeljack explained, fidgeting. "I mean, Percy and I built him from scratch and I… Well… Someone had to make a donation."

"Wait. You can't be serious." The medic said behind him, clearly dumbfounded.

"You can't make a sparkling without someone donating a portion of their spark." Wheeljack explained, though he was sure the medic already knew all about it. "I worked a lot on Omega's programming… So when the protoform came in, I volunteered."

For a long moment, silence filled the room. Ratchet had paused in his work, Wheeljack had paused in his movement, and his wires were no longer sparking erratically.

"So… Uh… Yeah." Wheeljack said, refusing to put up with the uncomfortable silence any longer. "I really do care for Omega. A lot actually."

There was a loud clang as Ratchet bounced a wrench off of the engineer's helm, causing said mech to jerk forward with a shout of profanity.

"What was that for?"

"For not telling me sooner you stupid fragger!" Ratchet snapped.

Wheeljack let out a quiet whimper as he tried his best to bury his head between his knees. "Sorry!"

"No! Don't apologize!"

"Would begging for forgiveness work better?" The engineer asked.

There was a short pause and then the medic gave a heavy sigh. "Dammit Jack." He groaned. "You never did know when to shut up and when to talk."

The engineer's head fins lit briefly at the use of his old nickname, before turned his head and craned his head to look back at the medic. "So does this mean you forgive me? And we can be friends again?"

Ratchet seemed to be out of wrenches so he gave the other mech a sharp slap on the helm. "No. But you're on the right track." He grunted, though there may have been a twinkle of amusement in his optics.

Wheeljack winced, but detached himself from his hiding spot bent over his own legs. His head fins lit at a level that made it obvious he was grinning behind his mask. "I can deal with that. For now."

Ratchet sighed and shook his head, moving over to continue the repairs on the other mech's back.

"So… You're gonna be my regular medic again, right?"


End file.
